Week 8

When it comes to comics, I'm personally not one for nonfiction. Nonfiction is not necessarily a bad thing, I'd just rather read something else as a getaway from reality.
Despite me feeling this way, I actually really enjoyed the March graphic novel. The civil rights movement was a very important way of progress in American history, but I don't really care about it, since I wasn't alive during that time and it doesn't affect me. The story took this history event that doesn't interest me, and made it so much more enjoyable. I have never heard of John Lewis before, but I must say, his story is very interesting.
I think what held my interest the most in this comic was the art style. Each page was so well-illustrated, in an almost cinematic way. The intricate detail and the use of intense values put so much life into the pictures. An observation that I made was that every time something really intense or dramatic was happening in a scene, such as when John was describing his poor experiences with the chickens, the where they get the phone call about the bombing, and when they attend a nonviolence gathering and are tested to react under stress. Each of this parts, and others alike, take an emotional toll on the main character, and the values used in the illustrations reflect this. While the pages throughout the comic have panels on white backgrounds, this has its panels on black backgrounds. This simple use of tone alone makes everything, even the narrative, seem a whole lot darker.

Week 7

I had never read Maus before, so it was an interesting experience to look at it with fresh eyes.
The analogy of using animal stereotypes in place of humans allows the story to touch on things that would make readers feel uncomfortable if humans were used instead. Zootopia did had the same effect: the controversial story is obviously about us, but using animals instead of human characters makes it more comfortable for the viewers since the reality isn't as blatant.
I thought the perspective was interesting, since the story was being told by the father of a character who is writing his experiences. The story often jumped back and forth between Vladek's past, and what was happening in reality as he told the story.
The story had a gradual escalation of events, and this is where the book fell off for me. In the first volume before Vladek actually gets to Auschwitz, the story feels very flat and not-engaging. It has several deaths, which have the potential to be tragic and evoke sad feelings with the reader, but they are presented in a "telling versus showing" sort of way. If those events were shown and carried out, and even included more dynamics in the characters, it would be more interesting and allow the reader to sympathize with the characters.
Sympathizing with the characters is another point that I want to make, since I found it very difficult to do so. Of course, the Holocaust was one of the most horrible and tragic events in history, so anything involving it should give an audience an unsettling sensation. I felt that it was different in this case, because the reader is pulled out of the action. If the readers are supposed to really sympathize with what the characters are going through, they should be pulled into what's happening instead of being told by the characters. I guess this was done to make the horrific events more subtle, but considering this is about the Holocaust, I would have expected it to be pushed more.
Also, an interesting observation I made was that the drawing quality of this narrative changes dramatically over time. The very beginning of the first volume has clearer and more refined drawings, especially with the style that the mice are drawn in. The drawings become more simplified and graphic-looking over time.

Week 6

The Underground Comics were... interesting, to say the least. I read a bunch of them, but I thoroughly studied the Air Pirates comic.

One thing that I found interesting in many of these issues of Underground Comics was the variety. A lot of the issues compile comics of many different artists; some are very visually unappealing, and others, are really pretty to look at. Some of the really horribly-drawn comics made me wonder if some of the artists behind these comics were rejected comic artists, who sellout to making Underground Comics. The Zap Comicx are a good example of not only this artistic variety, but also content variety. The issue of Zap that I read had some stupid comics with the occasional raunchy humor, but it also contained extremely explicit content that depicted intense acts of violence and graphic sexual material, as well as political commentary. The political commentary was presented in a way that I would expect. The strip in the issue of Zap that I saw showed depictions of society around the world compared to the "perfect" America, so you get the racist stereotypes, or whatever. It didn't really phase me.

The graphic material in some of these Underground Comics was actually kind of...funny to me? I'm one of the weird types who enjoys really dark humor, and I don't get offended by anything, really. Especially in Air Pirates, I thought the content was genuinely humorous. I normally don't find explicit sexual content to be appealing, but the comics that deliberately parodied the Disney characters were taken to such extreme levels, that it ended up being funny to me. Yes, the content was very edgy, but it was pushed to such a high level of absurdity, that I found it amusing, to an extent. It was something that I would have expected from one of the older, more explicit (and better) episodes of South Park. Anyone could make a stupid pornographic comic, but it becomes creative when it involves sex with an anthropomorphic caterpillar woman with fifty vaginas. Stuff like this is so stupid and bad, that it ends up being funny, which I am guilty of thinking.

Week 5

This week, I studied Will Eisner's Life on Another Planet. 

What really struck me about this graphic novel was the style. The drawing quality strays away from the typical realistic comic style, and goes into a more exaggerated and expressive style. Eisner portrays the characters as caricatures, and focuses more on emphasizing their movement rather than having them stand stiffly while looking pretty (like a lot of characters in the action comics looked). The characters express emotion by using their entire body, which gives the drawings a very organic and convincing feel that pushes the drama levels extremely high.
For instance, toward the beginning of Life on Another Planet, the two main characters are caught eavesdropping by an antagonist, and they end up bashing his head with a rock. The movement in these sequential drawings are so clear and convincing, that it's difficult to not feel queasy after seeing it.
Also, this brings me to mentioning that the way that the characters are illustrated interacting together is so beautiful. There is sort of a cohesive motion to the characters in each drawing, and they way that Eisner illustrates this motion brings out the feeling in how the characters interact with each other. I think that seeing the relationship between two characters makes a drawing so much more interesting to look at since there's some sort of dynamic to be seen, and since his drawings are composed so heavily of character emotion and interaction, they're so much more interesting.

Something else I've noticed is that Will Eisner utilizes the space on each of the pages. He doesn't limit the drawings to single panels, but instead, takes advantage of any space given on the paper. More often than not, the drawings fall out of panels and almost flow into each other, and it's a beautiful thing to look at. It's as if each page is its own composition, holding an important, individual part to the story. This inconsistency of panel illustration also makes the graphic novel more engaging, since the actual layout of drawings on each page gives the reader's eyes a fresh sight every time.

Week 4

I looked into action comics quite a bit for this segment, so I'm going to be talking about those!

I'm not sure whether or not it was the writers' intention, but I found the comics to be kind of funny; especially the Superman and Marvel comics. Comparing the Superman comics to the Marvel ones, the Superman ones, for the most part, are more text-driven, whereas the Marvel comics have a lot of panels per page to support its text. What I find comical about the way these issues are written is the dialogue. Almost every text bubble ends in an exclamation mark, and in my head, I always read all the dialogue as ridiculously over-enthused. It's like the kind of silly narration you would typically get from a Fairly Oddparents episode that's centered around the Crimson Chin. This is just a funny trope, and seeing the source material gives me a new appreciation for it!

Another similarity between these two action comic books is that they're not just one story. Both issues have a main story, which is showcased on the cover, but also include other short stories, ranging from cowboys to hunting animals in the jungle. The superhero-themed story on the cover is continued in later issues, and those later issues will contain other shorts as well.

Also, I'm just going to say that the action in these comics are very over-played and almost cliche, specially in the Superman comic books, but I guess that's just another feature that makes them entertaining to read. The level of absurdity is definitely an interest-holder (seriously, Superman? "Balloon beasts?" That's ridiculous!)

Week 3

Though comic strips seemed really awesome for their time and were highly regarded in society, I feel like their early executions were very primitive compared to modern comic-making techniques.

Early comic strips appeared to be very experimental. So many of them posses intricate styles that have include a lot of detail and high production value, while others were simple and minimalist. With the more detailed comics, I noticed a reoccurring problem where the artists' would skew the written text, or barely try to fit it into text bubbles, as if they were not prepared ahead of time with how much text to include in a single bubble.
Another problem I saw with some comic strips was that the drawings in the panels were pretty descriptive and it was really easy to interpret what was happening in them, but the characters were saying exactly what they were doing, which real people obviously don't do. If a character is already doing something; raking some leaves, for example, he or she would not say out loud "Here I am raking the leaves." Instead, they should have dialogue to aid the image, maybe something along the lines of "wow, there sure are a lot of leaves to rake!"

Regardless, I really like seeing the variety of comic strips. It's really cool to see different artists have their own take on this art form, and what they come up with is very unique. It's amazing to see the most beautifully illustrated comics compared to something silly and minimalist. They're both comics, but I find it very interesting how different artists visualize.

Week 2

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

This comic was interesting because it described concepts that I'm familiar with, but went into detail as to how and why they are important to understanding comics. Concepts such as icons, simplification, and gutters are all things that are important to the art of graphic narrative, but I could never explain why, and Understanding Comics does just that. 

Icons are important because they are used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea. There are symbols that people naturally recognize as some "thing," and using said symbols in place of extremely descriptive drawing could get the same point across just as effectively, because the symbols are so "iconic" to people. 

Every storyteller wants their readers to connect with what they're reading. Simplification, especially of characters, is used to help the reader relate to the characters in the story. The more detail something has, the more distinct and descriptive it is, making it difficult for a viewer to connect with something that's so established already. If a character has a simple design, it's easier for the reader so see him or herself in the shoes of the character. 

In film, the passage of time is usually represented by a cross-fade or dissolve. In comics, time is represented by the gutters that divide the panels. When the panels are divided into separate sections, this indicates a pass of time. Everything that occurs in a single panel is a single event. I just find how time is portrayed in comics to be very interesting, especially since there's a concrete explanation for how it's executed as shown by Scott McCloud.